"To deter a nation state you should never underestimate the air and naval power of the United States," General John Abizaid, the commander of US forces in the Middle East told AFP in a joint interview late Friday.
"Why the Iranians would want to move against us in an overt manner that would cause us to use our air or naval power against them would be beyond me. We have an incredible amount of power," he said.
Abizaid made the comment in response to questions about whether the United States, with the bulk of its ground forces tied down in Iraq, had the means to meet other contingencies such as a conflict with Iran.
If this isn't an admission that we need more troops, what is, right?
This article argues for a bigger, better, and badder Army. Certainly, it is getting better and badder with transformation so the author is really calling for bigger:
As of mid-November, approximately 180,000 reservists and national guardsmen are mobilized, of whom 154,000 are U.S. Army. They supplement an active Army force set by law at 480,000, but "temporarily" expanded to a little over 500,000. In total, then, there are about 650,000 soldiers actively in service.
For reasons that are hard to fathom, there is still a debate in the Pentagon about whether this requirement for ground forces is an Iraq-driven anomaly or a reflection of the "long, hard slog" that is the global war on terror. The answer ought to be obvious. Even if, in the next year, it proves possible to reduce the number of troops in Iraq, the need for larger land forces won't end. It's the nature of this war.
At one time I called for 40,000 more troops to create two new divisions organized as motorized infantry with some armor in support. Later, to get troops into the fight faster, I called for the 40,000 to be organized in 8 separate brigades or even separate battalion to some extent. These could fight under existing divisional flags. With 150,000 Army reservists (Guard or Reserves) on duty above the nominal strength of the active Army, it seems obvious that we need more troops.
But is this solution right? The Army is working to add combat brigades in a manner that undermines the assumption that we need to add more troops to the active army to get more relevant combat units. The military is converting Army jobs to civilian jobs, freeing up slots under the ceiling to add combat troops. Excess units that were once necessary to fight in the Fulda Gap such as separate artillery brigades and air defense units are being converted to units more relevant to today's threats. The result is that we will go from 75 active and reserve combat brigades to perhaps 84 in the relatively near future and maybe 10 or more after that without adding to the active Army personnel ceiling. This is how I'd organize the 84 brigades our Army will soon (within a decade?) deploy.
In addition, the Army is looking at the whole active-reserve mix. A lot of support units absolutely essential to go to war are in the reserves. A lot of these should be active and maybe some of our active combat units should migrate to the reserves while support units migrate to the active component so we don't need 150,000 reservists to fight a low intensity conflict such as Iraq. For example, heavy armor is key in winning, but we defeated Iraq's armed forces with 1 reinforced Army heavy division in the invasion. Half of our active Army battalions are heavy. While we would need lots of armor for a fight with China, do we need so much armor on active duty for smaller opponents? After all, even total mobilization would not bring enough land power for a war against China on the Asian mainland. We should explore moving heavy units to the reserves and infantry and critical support units to the active component.
Further, the Army doesn't want to add troop strength because it fears that it will be saddled with troops that Congress will not pay for once the Iraq campaign winds down. Certainly, I'd hate to argue that we will not win the current fight and so we should enlarge the Army to avoid straining the current Army in this losing fight. Either we will win the war relatively soon and the Army's assumption is right; or, if we aren't going to win soon, is the solution to reinforce failure by doing more of the same by adding more troops? Shouldn't we really be talking strategy and not numbers if we are not winning? For if the strategy is wrong, more troops won't address the basic problem. And I'll say it again, I think we have sufficient troops to win in Iraq. The key is getting Iraqi units into the fight.
But even with an Iraq campaign that will be won in the near future, with a broader war on our hands that will last a long time, shouldn't the Army be larger for future campaigns? I don't know. Perhaps the same argument I've used about Iraq itself applies globally. That is, if we are capable of doing the fighting will we be tempted to do so since our troops are more effective? The key in Iraq is getting Iraqis to fight the enemy with minimal combat help from us. Shouldn't our goal globally be to get allies to fight our enemies with minimal US ground forces? Wouldn't too many US troops available tempt us to just do it ourselves? In the long run, that would be self-defeating since we are not powerful enough to take such a global role for long. Where we can we should send equipment and provide training. If necessary, we can provide air support. When that isn't enough, special forces can fight with our allies to teach them on the job. When that isn't enough, small numbers of US ground forces could help. When we must, we can throw the entire US military arsenal at the enemy. I am decidedly not calling for a strategy of escalation! What I mean is that at the start, we look at what we need to solve a problem and help an ally and then throw in two corps to march on the enemy capital or an aid package (or something in between) right off the bat.
We may need to add more troops to the active Army. But I am willing to hold off on my calls for more troops until I see how the restructuring goes. The military's process for adding combat units has changed my assumptions about how to increase combat power and the number of boots on the ground.
